MSN AdCenter Report: "Quality Score" + Broadmatch
MSN creatives are similar in many ways to Google creatives, however there are some major differences that you need to know to get the most out of your MSN ads (if you ran ads in MSN’s search featured site or you’re an agency), and some key things that MSN has left out of its help documentation.

Here is what MSN does tell you:
• Include your main target audience keyword in the first line of your ad.
• Describe the unique feature of your product or service.
• Avoid promotional language in your ad text.
• Use correct grammar and spelling.
• Use clear, understandable writing.
• Avoid repetitions in your ad text.
• Use correct capitalization and punctuation.

Here is what MSN left out (from what we’ve observed thus far):
MSN does have a type of “Quality Score” that they go by that effect the position of your ad.

They look at Cost Per Click, Click Thru Rate, and Landing Page Relevancy which is very similar to Google.

The difference between MSN and Google is this, the Landing Page Relevancy in MSN goes one step further. If the actual keyword you are bidding on is not found on the landing page, your ad may actually be declined.

The other big difference is MSN’s broad match.

If you set your keyword in MSN to broad match, the keyword should be in the creative or your ad may not show.

In other words, if you have “green widgets” in your account on broad match and none of your creatives have “green widgets” in them, you will be missing out on all of this traffic because your ad may not appear.

Search Term on broad match “green widgets.”
This ad would be served:
Green Widgets
Large selection of green
widgets. Free shipping
www.displayurlhere.com

This ad may not be served:
Widgets
Large selection of
widgets. Free Shipping
www.displayurlhere.com

You may see some ads that that look like this rule did not apply, but right now MSN is serving only 25% of their traffic so the other 75% of ads are not from MSN AdCenter Accounts.

Our MSN AdCenter Results so Far:
The accounts I have seen are converting at a rate of 4 times the rate of Google and Yahoo at a lower cost. Of course, this will change when they are fully up and running and competition increases.
Al Scillitani | permalink | +marktd |